Thank you very much, Dirprwy Lywydd. Well, this is a debate about the relationship between the digital world and the world around us, on the interaction that happens between our use of digital technology and our concerns about climate change. Let me say right at the outset that, as chair of the cross-party group on digital, I'm eager to see us make more use of digital platforms, to improve our digital skills, and to build new platforms. These, I think, will enrich us in so many ways, creating economic opportunities, improving our health, strengthening our language, everything, including helping us to tackle the climate crisis. Through digital technology, we can manage our use of energy better, and that's how we model effective ways of producing green energy, and we can plan less harmful ways of travelling around, and that happens through digital technology and so forth. 

But—and this is what I am submitting today—we need to gain a greater realisation that that use of digital technology in itself produces a carbon footprint. I bring this up because of the very interesting discussion that we had on this issue at the last meeting of the cross-party group on digital. And what we heard in that discussion was that that carbon footprint can be a very, very large one, if we are not careful. And I came to this conclusion: as well as developing practical ways to be more effective in our use of digital, we could also be thinking now about whether there is scope for new legislation.

The proposal itself outlines the type of Bill that I believe could be worth considering, and I ask you to support it in terms of its current content, or in terms of the principle that we have to think along these lines now, in order to be in a strong position to deal with some of the challenges that are only going to pile up if we don't address them. And by the way, I am aware that the Welsh  Government is aware of these challenges and is tackling them in several ways—I don't believe that officials and so forth are blind to these challenges. Bodies like the Centre for Digital Public Services work in this area. However, the challenges somehow need to be better understood by more people. 

Many do not understand that the everyday decisions that they make have an environmental impact. How much electricity can be used, or how much of a carbon footprint could be created in connection with sending an e-mail? Well consider how many billions of e-mails are sent. Perhaps the text of the occasional e-mail raises the temperature in your office, but consider the fact that storing the data in that e-mail contributes to the heating of machines in data centres, and that the environmental cost of cooling those data centres becomes greater and greater. Consider that including an attachment to that e-mail greatly increases the need for data storage space, and that a decision to send a link could reduce the carbon footprint. Legislation requiring an assessment of the carbon footprint of using digital resources in an organisation could lead to improving good practices within those organisations.

Also, given that many of us are drowning in a tidal wave of junk, or at least unnecessary e-mail communications, what if legislation of that type could lead to fewer e-mails being sent, improving the environment and our own productivity as a workforce at the same time?